The initialization of initial generating equipment maintenance schedules while a heuristic method is used

Currently, heuristic methods based on iterative changing of feasible solutions set provide a perspective tool for generation equipment maintenance scheduling in power systems. Wherein effectiveness of a heuristic method depends significantly on the initial set of possible schedules or in other words quality of the method initialization. In this case, a widely used methodology of building the initial array of solutions on the basis of pseudorandom uniform generation of control variables seems to be only palliative way to access the problem. This paper proposes alternative initialization procedure drawing on the example of generating units maintenance planning with heuristic differential evolution method. The principle of this method is to get initial set of solutions utilizing normal probability distribution to generate pseudorandom deviations from the suboptimal maintenance schedule which is to be preliminarily formed using directed search method. Following this approach allows to improve probabilistic characteristics of resultant maintenance schedule in particular to decrease median value of an objective function and its coefficient of variation, and to maximize probability to get the combination of units outage moments completely suiting operational constraints.